


Moments Made Eternity

by Trobadora



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universes, M/M, Mind Meld, Multi, the obsessions of Khan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 17:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>This is the moment Khan lives in.</i> - Three universes. Three moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moments Made Eternity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heeroluva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/gifts).



**Universe 1**

This is the moment Khan lives in, the moment he cannot escape. (He is not trying to escape.)

In this moment, Khan sees torpedoes explode on the view screen, the obliteration of all he holds dear. He hears Admiral Marcus shout, "You are not in control here, Harrison!"

In this moment, Khan thinks, but does not say: _You want war? I will give you war. I will wind your people up with the craving for vengeance; I will give you every excuse. And you will run yourself straight into your death. Because you are not ready._

Marcus, in his craving for action, needs must deliver himself to his fate. Superior weapons cannot compensate for excessive foolishness. And that man thinks he can control _Khan_.

* * *

**Universe 0**

This is the moment Khan lives in, the moment he cannot escape. (He is not trying to escape.)

In this moment, Khan sees Marla before him, the last moment before her death. Dirty and emaciated, as they all have become, madness in her eyes, her body paralysed. Killed - for killed she is, even before she is dead.

The world around him is a lifeless desert. She survived the storms and quakes when the planet shifted its orbit; she survived deprivation and despair - to be killed by a Ceti eel, the one thing still alive on this world. 

In this moment, he closes his heart, even to his companions, the few of them yet alive. With no more hostages to fortune, all that remains will be rage and fury and vengeance - unfettered vengeance. 

He is a prince, exiled in the desert. He will raise the very sand against his foes.

* * *

**Universe -1**

Khan leans back against the wall of the top-secret Starfleet archive, and observes. It is true that he has been caught - what was the charming term the human used - _red-handed_ , but it is also clear that the two men before him are here with no more authorisation than he.

They are a practised team, the human and the Vulcan. Their banter appears casual and relaxed, yet neither of them takes his eyes off Khan even for a moment. When one of them moves, the other shifts to compensate for any changes in line of fire, in range of movement, in line of sight.

"Remind me to thank Lee," the human tells the Vulcan, cryptically.

The Vulcan tilts his head in a strange, sideways gesture of ironic affirmation. "It would appear he has indeed uncovered ... something."

The human smirks. "Something? Such precision."

An expressive eyebrow briefly rises toward the Vulcan's hairline, and lowers again. "Precision would require data. Whether any of the rumours you were given are based on fact has yet to be ascertained."

This is of interest to him. These two may be on the same track he is. If so, he has no objection; they are no bother to him. Even if they should prove to be enemies: He can handle a mere human and a rule-bound Vulcan easily enough.

His people are safe for now in their shells, under the best shielding this future's science and his genius could, together, contrive. Safe and hidden until he finds a place for them to wake. No one will hold them hostage against him now; fortune favours him at last.

He has removed the tracker Marcus had implanted, which he'd kept for a full year only to lull Marcus into the sense of control he craved. Now he has no more need of that. All that remains for him here is his vengeance against Marcus and his ilk. He will bring them down, and then he will shake the dust off his boots and find a new, a better place for himself and his people, a place to live and grow beyond the limits of Earth.

He will bring Marcus down - and if he is correct about who those two men before him are, he can use them for that.

The human tilts his head toward the Vulcan and raises a hand to his face in an obscure questioning gesture.

The Vulcan's eyebrow - the only part of his face engaged in any kind of expression - moves up again, and stays there this time. "I will not force a mind without an immediate emergency," he declares calmly.

Khan suppresses both the shudder that comes with the idea of someone intruding into his mind and the sneer that follows in its wake at the Vulcan's statement. To have the advantage and refuse to press it - from what he can tell, it's the inevitable weakness of the logical Vulcan race. The human appears to be more ruthless.

The threat is very real nonetheless. The Vulcan might redefine his circumstances as _an immediate emergency_ at any moment, after all. Khan considers his choices. The easiest would be to kill them both. There is a part of him that has already mapped out all the moves, the shift of his fingers against necks, the quick snap. The modified steriliser, which would remove any trace of his DNA from this place. The swift exit, hidden as his entrance was, avoiding all monitored areas. They are expecting a weak human, and he is anything but. He could lay them both to waste before they know it.

There are better uses for these two, though. Alone, all he can do is destroy Marcus physically. Involving others is a risk, but it brings the promise of ruining the man completely and publicly while yet leaving him alive to suffer every last humiliating moment. Khan's lips form a tight, savage smile, and he makes his decision.

"Two-three-one-seven-four-six-one-one," he says calmly, the first words he speaks to them. "Coordinates not far from Earth. If you want to know what is going on behind your back - behind everyone's back - go and take a look."

"Because a stranger who broke into a classified archive level is such a reliable source," the human sneers.

"You are here for a reason, Captain Kirk" Khan reminds the man, and is rewarded with a flinch as Kirk realises he's been recognised. "So am I. Though unlike you, I know what it is I am searching for."

He'd been searching the archives to make sure of the extent of Marcus's influence, which would then become the extent of the vengeance to be wreaked. What he'd found before Kirk and Spock had interrupted him was enough to be going on with for this new, more delicious vengeance.

Truths are not the least of means when it comes to setting people on the course you want. 

Khan will have his vengeance, for every man and woman and child of his people Marcus has held hostage. For every humiliation Khan has suffered in saving them. And if he can use Captain Kirk and Commander Spock to do so, all the better.

~*~

There can be little trust between them. Kirk and Spock are not fools. They're neither foolish enough to discard his information, nor to believe him without corroboration. And of course Khan's heart knows better than to have faith in any not of his own kind. It took him no time at all, after being woken from his frozen sleep, to recognise the deep, irrational paranoia humans have about any kind of genetic augmentation. They know themselves to be inferior, after all, and it makes them afraid.

So it should. 

They are fortunate indeed that Khan has given up on this world a long time ago. This place, this planet, is a lost cause. Centuries ago he understood this, and left it behind. They called it exile and prison; he called it liberation. Whatever his people might find, whatever might find them, all the old ties are severed. A ruler is tied to his domain as surely as a servant to his lord, but he is no longer bound to this place. His people are no longer bound. Soon they will all be free.

But now Kirk and Spock and Khan, all three of them, have reached the limits of what cooperation without trust will give them. They stand before the threshold to action - all the information is gathered, all the plans are laid out. Each of them is crucial in those plans. Now they must either trust or part ways.

The solution Spock suggests would be ingenious, if it were not so offensive.

"I do not propose a deep meld," the Vulcan continues. "I merely wish to make certain your commitment to this course of action. Within a meld, there can be no secrets - you will be able to see as much. Do not attempt to look deeper, and neither will I."

Khan sneers. Spock may not be willing to apply force, but he appears to be quite comfortable with coercion. "You would have me lay myself open to you, based on nothing more than your word?"

"Vulcans do not lie." Spock's voice is calm and assured, as if pronouncing a law of nature.

Khan's first instinct is to write it all off. But his vengeance is so close to being completed, and if he had to start afresh ...

He considers. "What of Kirk, then? He may be willing to take your word for my intentions, but I will not take yours for his." The Vulcan is limited by logic, after all, and the human may choose to act in quite illogical ways, even behind the back of his Vulcan friend.

Kirk leans back into his chair, and smirks. "I have an idea for that."

~*~

The Vulcan's fingertips are cool against Khan's cheek. He holds himself perfectly still and watches as Spock's other hand splays over Kirk's face. Kirk leans comfortably into the alien touch.

"My mind to your mind," Spock's deep voice murmurs. "My thoughts to your thoughts."

The dispassionate touch on his face becomes a burning sting. Then something is pressing against Khan, surrounding him, half embrace half vice. It takes Khan a moment to realise that it's not Spock's mind alone. The human and the Vulcan have already slid into a comfortable mental union, with all the ease and comfort of a physical embrace.

 _My mind to your mind,_ Spock's mental voice prods, gently but insistent, and Khan feels the borders of his self fraying, unravelling, as the dual human/Vulcan mind seeps into him, promising communion. It's a lie, of course.

It's a lie. There can be no communion between him and these men, mere human the one and rule-bound Vulcan the other. They hold nothing in common save the desire to ruin Marcus and all of Marcus's plans. For a moment, fury and hatred threaten to overwhelm him, but they are all one, connected, and the part of him that is Spock dissolves it all with a word, a thought: _Kaiidth._

What is, is. 

Khan sees it before him now, the Vulcan mind - the pattern and the guidance of their union. What had he expected? Neat logic, an established set of rules structuring a mind as rigidly as a computer is defined by its programming. Cold, sterile order, a living thing deadened by its own will. The mind unfolding before him, into him, is nothing like that.

Within its structure Khan finds passion as vivid and burning as any he can remember ever having felt. The discipline directs a savagery to rival Khan's own. With a flash of recognition, the mind he shares now with the Vulcan acknowledges: Logic does not cripple it; logic makes it into a tool to be wielded.

Vulcans do not lie, it is true. But it's not a compulsion; it's a choice. Choice and honour and duty, all things Khan understands well.

And that is not all. If this is surface-only, he cannot imagine what a _deep meld_ might be like. For all his superior intellect, he could not have imagined any of this.

Within the Vulcan's mind, there is another mind. There are two minds before him, after all - each containing the other, being contained by it in turn. Two minds, commingling intimately, comfortably. The Vulcan's logic, the human's emotions - they do not hinder or impede each other, as Khan would have expected. They cherish and foster and support. 

The part of their union that is merely human (it thinks of itself that way, _merely_ , half wry humour and half defiant pride) is laughing at him, at his surprise.

The joy of this impossible union dances through their shared mindscape, an almost erotic charge. He is part of this union, yet apart. There is no intrusion here. There is only comfort, and Khan is drawn into it.

It's a delirious epiphany. Thoughts and feelings and memories flow into each other, his and theirs, until he can no longer tell them apart. An aching contentment washes over him, a searing pleasure not at all physical - - 

\- - and he rips himself away, away from this seduction, before he loses all of himself in it, before there is nothing left to hold back.

The part of them controlling the meld takes this as its cue and begins withdrawing. So they all needs must begin to drift from each other.

He is one; then he is three. He is human, Vulcan, augment. He is -

"Khan Noonien Singh," says Spock, opening his eyes.

~*~

This is the moment Khan lives in, the moment he cannot escape. (He is not trying to escape.)

In this moment, Khan looks on as two minds commingle before him, an embrace deeper and more intimate than any he has ever imagined. In this moment, just for a single moment, Khan becomes part of that sharing.

Khan regrets nothing. In his new home, he remembers an ancient Vulcan, Kirk's and Spock's friend, looking at Khan with strange eyes. "All things must be possible," he'd said in a tone of wonder, quite illogically, before he'd agreed to help convince the Federation Council. Khan's people are free now to raise their own civilisation, on a world all their own. 

Loneliness is a curse, but none worse than loneliness among those one loves. Khan regrets nothing but that he will always remember this: a sharing of himself, mind and soul.

All things must be possible for them now, indeed - all but this.


End file.
